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Guitar Chord Licks
Guitar Chord Licks To Expand Your Guitar Fretboard Knowledge
In contrast to the last Advanced Sweep Picking Licks And Exercises blog post, all the licks coming up in this latest collection are guitar chord licks.
Understanding and using chord ideas in your playing not only gives you interesting ideas that you might not have thought of when only playing single-note ideas, but they will also help immensely in unlocking your guitar fretboard.
Chords Licks Are Not Just For Clean Guitar Tones
These licks work great on acoustic guitar and for blues and jazz clean guitar tones, but don't be afraid to try the ideas with overdrive and distortion. Chord ideas sound rich and full when using clean guitar tones, but dirty sounds can often create very interesting ideas.
Even if you don't play the licks as held chord shapes, you can use the shapes to visualise the guitar fretboard and play the licks as single note lines. Some accurate picking and string muting will be required, but many cool ideas can be generated from chord voicings.
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sus2 And sus4 Chords
I love using sus2 and sus4 chords as they create a very open sound.
When playing acoustic guitar, I love to use sus2 and sus4 chord sounds. They are actually inversions of each other, so one shape can work for an inversion of the other.
Major and minor have distinctive sounds (happy and sad). sus2 and sus4 chords have a sound that allows them to be easily moved around into different keys. When playing outside lines and ideas, sus2 and sus4 chords often give me a great deal of inspiration.
Altered Chord Idea For Guitar
Some nice melodic minor scale action for this lick. Moving chords quickly and smoothly along the guitar fretboard takes quite a bit of practice and precise fingering for the sound to be smooth.
This lick is in the key of A minor, which is a very common key for the guitar. You will have plenty of opportunities to use this lick.
ii v i Triad Inversions
This lick has a classical sound to it due to using simple triads.
The ii v i chord progression is so common in many styles of music (especially jazz) and you will encounter this harmonic movement many times.
When playing over the ii v i progression, 7th chords and arpeggios are often the choices, although triads can also sound pretty cool.
C Major Scale Triads Lick
What could be more basic than playing over a C major chord? It can often be difficult to create interesting ideas over basic chord progressions, although using alternating triads such as in this example creates harmonic motion.
As with any of these chord licks, you can also arpeggiate them for single-note lines.
Triads Over Dominant Chords
As mentioned in the previous lick, chords can be arpeggiated in various ways to create interesting sounds and ideas.
This lick arpeggiates the diatonic chords, although a certain amount of over-ringing (notes ringing together) was allowed in the performance.
How much over-ringing you allow is entirely up to you and depends on the sound you are trying to achieve.
Diatonic Harmonic Minor Triads Lick
Another pair of triads in various inversions played over a dominant 7th chord for an Eastern-sounding lick.
This lick uses the harmonic minor scale which is always an instant gratification sound when improvising. I especially like experimenting with the harmonic minor scale over dominant 7th chords when playing acoustic guitar. Very satisfying!
Blues Chords Lick
A nice mix of diminished 7th chords and dominant 7th chords gives a bluesy sound to this chord lick.
dim7 chords can often be added as passing chords to chord lines. When used with dominant 7th chords, this idea works extremely well.
When playing solo acoustic guitar gigs, I often use this type of dim7 chord movement as it is a powerful tool when playing improvised chord lines.
G Melodic Minor Mode 6 Pentatonic
A pentatonic scale simply means a scale containing 5 notes. There are many possibilities when it comes to creating pentatonic scales, although most guitarists are only aware of the basic major and minor pentatonic scales.
I love to experiment with different 5-note selections from 7-note scales, choosing notes that are important to the chord over which I am playing and creating chords from these new scales.
Pentatonic Chords In A
This pentatonic chord scale lick takes the previous idea further by changing scales on every chord.
The i vi ii v chord progression is something that every guitarist must learn to play over and this lick will open up new harmonic possibilities.
Once you understand the harmonic theory behind this lick, you will also have much inspiration for single-note melodies
D7 Chromatic Craziness
Various chord inversions moving chromatically are used in this lick and they create an interesting descending idea.
Experiment by playing the idea as chords with notes allowed to ring together and also as a single-note line. A pick-and-finger approach will work well here, although I tend to use a thumb pick all the time these days allowing licks like this to be played very easily.
C Major Triad Pairs
This is more of a straight exercise than a guitar lick although once you get the idea, long streams of chord soloing will be possible in your playing.
Be sure to work this idea through all the scales you know and use it in your playing. Triads are basic. although they are also very powerful tools and the building blocks for more advanced ideas.
Quartal Harmony Altered Chord Lick
I love using quartal chords in my playing. They are simply chords that have been constructed from diatonic 4th interval rather than 3rds and many other guitar techniques can be applied to the shapes once you have them down.
If you have ever experimented with cascading harmonics, or harping harmonies, quartal chord voicings are perfect for this particular technique.
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